


in the end

by lostinthefire



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostinthefire/pseuds/lostinthefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world doesn't end in fire or ice.  It doesn't end in a bang or even a whimper.  It ends quietly and without notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miriad/gifts).



> Title borrowed and inspired by Neil Gaiman. Hopefully no one will mind.

Losing yourself is not a quick process, it never has been. People have been losing themselves since they gained the capability to know what the words meant. They fell from grace, they slipped out of each other's hand, they got lost in the dark.

They disappeared. These days, it's just a bit more literal.

It's never fast, never in the blink of an eye. It's slow and careful and the world never notices, not at first.

So when it all starts to go away, when people slip out of one another's minds and hearts and hands, when the world becomes a little more open again, no one notices. Not in the beginning.

¬*¬

Elizabeth rushes around the kitchen, trying to get breakfast and herself ready all at once. It's an art she's honed over the years and, at this point, she's quite good at it.

Peter is upstairs; she can hear him moving around and she's almost certain Neal with him. When she listens more closely she can make out the second set of footsteps, and it brings about a comfort in her that she doesn't really notice until it's already settled within her chest.

She loves mornings like this.

Of course, she would happily take the slower mornings, the ones where none of them had to go off to work and they could get up slowly. There's a different quality to those days, though, an almost unreal sense to them.

No one gets that lazy comfort every day, the world rushes just a little bit. When they're all on their feet, giving each other quick kisses before darting out the door, that's when she feels it's real, when she has to stop and marvel that this is her life.

Because as surely as they will go out the door, all three of them will return home again, they'll have dinner and talk and enjoy each other. Not always at the same time and not always all together, but eventually they will find one another, and she thinks it's marvelous.

¬*¬

It creeps into you, slow and steady. You don't notice the losing at first. No one ever does. It wraps around you until you can't escape it. People forget, they don't mean to but they do.

They lose you and you lose yourself and there's no way of stopping it.

Some have tried, of course, many have. They fight and fight and scream at the world, announcing who they are but it doesn't matter. By that time, the rest of the world can't even hear them.

And a while after that, when they realize just what's happened, they let themselves be lost. It's a slow acceptance, but it always comes eventually.

¬*¬

He doesn't know what it is, but Neal can sense something is wrong where he works.

It's something in the air, a new kind of emptiness that seems to make everything echo a little more. Not as many people travel the halls, voices carry just a little more than they used to.

He brings this up to a co-worker, a girl who's showed interest in him since he stopped working for the FBI and started a string of temporary jobs, quitting each one after he got bored with them.

She says she hasn't noticed anything odd.

He shrugs and puts it to the back of his mind.

¬*¬

No one knows what to do when it starts, not really. By the time it comes to anyone's attention, people are too far gone already.

It becomes a waiting game, a slow, painful waiting game. People equate it to watching someone die and maybe they are. No one knows.

No one knows what happens after you're lost. No one can remember if anyone ever came back.

People start writing down the memories they have of the person. They videotape them, take pictures, do everything they can to capture the one they're losing. It's desperate and a lot of people say they can't capture the authenticity of the person, not when they're trying so hard.

¬*¬

Elizabeth talks about how many memorials she's been planning lately.

It's not a cheerful topic but it's been bothering her. People are losing loved ones left and right, she says. People are leaving.

Peter shifts uncomfortably and Neal takes a sip of his wine.

She says that she's been doing too many memorials for children, for lovers. She looks tired.

Peter reaches out and takes one of her hands, squeezing it tightly, and Neal takes the other. None of them say anything, but they hold on to one another for a little longer than necessary.

¬*¬

Eventually, it becomes a part of things. You are born into this world, you grow up, you lose yourself.

No one dies anymore, not of natural causes. They just fade, fall into the woodwork of the world, never to be remembered but in the pages of books and picture frames.

People will try and remember them, try and tell first hand accounts of the interaction with Person X, Y and Z but it's not real.

All the memories are constructs, stories they read, or videos they saw. There's no real memory there, not anymore.

¬*¬

Neal thinks it can't touch them. He doesn't know why, doesn't have any rational thought for it, but he's sure that it can't get them.

He doesn't take pictures of Peter and Elizabeth and doesn't write anything down. He's not scared of losing them, he knows he can't.

Most of the time.

Every now and then, late at night, fear gets to him. A fear that tells him there's only two of them in the bed, that there only ever was two of them. There is no Peter, no Elizabeth. He only has room in his heart for one person.

Then he reaches out, touches both of them, and takes a deep, calming breath.

It's irrational, he knows. If one of them were lost, he wouldn't know it, but in those moments, there's little he can do to dispel that fear.

¬*¬

It doesn't discriminate. It takes old people, young people, the rich and the poor. It creeps under doorways and in through the cracks. It catches you in forests and fields and big cities too.

It's inescapable and it's coming.

People try and hide or bind themselves to the world around them. They try and make a mark so deep, no one could forget them, but it doesn't work.

They get lost, just like everyone else.

It doesn't hold back, it comes for everyone.

¬*¬

They don't notice it at first, not that anyone does.

Elizabeth doesn't notice how Peter's name slips her mind, and Neal doesn't notice how he only reaches for her hand.

Sometimes they forget to set a third plate on the table, or sometimes they don't make room on the couch.

Little things, things that shouldn't matter, things that are warning signs.

Even Peter doesn't notice, his mind already losing itself. He hovers in doorways like a ghost, stands off to the side where no one notices him. He's becoming a ghost in his own home and he doesn't even realize it.

That's how they go sometimes, quietly and without notice.

¬*¬

There are documents from the lost themselves, videos and writings explaining how the process occurs, what it feels like.

Unsurprisingly, all of these documents seem to get lost over time.

There are stories instead, tales of what it's like to lose yourself, stories of where it is you go next.

Some people believe that you're ascending, others believe that you're falling. Others still believe that you're still on Earth, just out of reach.

No one knows for sure, no one can, but that's why they have the stories. Because myth erupts from a world that doesn't understand itself.

¬*¬

When she can't remember Peter's name, Elizabeth starts shaking.

When Peter hesitates to give it, Neal starts shaking.

They don't do anything that night, just hold each other close. There's no mad rush for a video camera, no frantic scrabbling of pen and paper.

It's not that they're above that, not at all, it's just that none of them can fathom doing anything more than holding onto each other.

Elizabeth cries and Peter holds her, tells her that he loves her, that he always will.

Neal lets them have a moment to themselves, gets up just long enough so that he can grab a sketchbook and pencil to start drawing.

¬*¬

In the end, it comes for everyone. It strips the world bare and leaves it open and exposed. The last man on Earth doesn't realize he's the last man, and when he's gone, so is everything.

It will happen one day, maybe not soon, but eventually. There will be nothing left and no one to remember that there was a world where the Earth stood, that there were hearts and minds and souls wandering the planet.

One day it will happen and no one will be there to remember when.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me elsewhere:  
> [My DW](http://rootsofthestories.dreamwidth.org) (which I use regularly)  
> [My Tumblr](http://analtarofstars.tumblr.com/) (which I am very rarely on)  
> [My Twitter](http://twitter.com/harvestgraces) (which I am on at random)


End file.
